If you have anything to share about these holy people, please reply now -- biographical episodes, prayers
through their intercession, the fact that one is your patron saint -- whatever moves you. If you are interested in one of these saints and want to find out more about him/her, please ask. Information is sometimes available on the Internet.

All you holy men and women, saints of God, pray for us.
God bless you.
John

Answers

On June 30, we members of the Catholic Church family honor, in a
special way, the following friends of God -- saints and blesseds whose
souls are now in heaven:

Holy Martyrs of Rome [also called “First Martyrs of the Church of
Rome”] (a composite feast for sixteen groups comprising thousands of
Christians [each group also having a separate feastday] who perished
during persecutions between the first century and the time of rise of
Constantine.)

If you have anything to share about these holy people, please reply
now -- biographical episodes, prayers through their intercession,
the fact that one is your patron -- whatever moves you. If you are
interested in one of these saints or blesseds and want to find out
more about him/her, please ask. Information is sometimes available on
the Internet.

All you holy men and women, saints of God, pray for us.
God bless you.
John

This is to add the name of an heroic woman, just beatified in Slovakia
by our pope ...

Bl. Sidonia Schelingova of Kriva [Zdenka] [baptized Cecilia]
(Slovak, member of Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Holy
Cross, nurse, imprisoned by Communists, tortured, martyred at age 38
in 1955 [beatified 2003])

Friends,
As can be seen above, last October I added a "micro-biography" of a
newly beatified Slovak woman whom I referred to as "Bl. Sidonia
Schelingova of Kriva [Zdenka] ... martyred ... in 1955".
I recently received an e-mail message from a very nice woman who is a
niece of the new "Beata" (Blessed). She was concerned about two
things in my entry and asked me to provide the following
clarifications:

(1) Her aunt has always been referred to by her baptismal name,
Cecilia, or her (Slovak) name as a religious sister, Zdenka -- not by
the name I used, Sidonia. [It is true that, in my listings of saints
and blesseds, I have chosen to start each entry with the English
equivalent (e.g., Sidonia) of a non-English name (e.g., Zdenka).]
(2) Sister Zdenka was not executed by the Communists, as my
word "martyred" may imply to some readers. After having been
imprisoned and tortured, she was released and died outside the
control of her former captors. [I used the word "martyred" in an
extended sense of that word, because, at the time of her
beatification, the Church referred to her as a "martyr" for the
faith -- her life probably having been shortened by mistreatment.]

I encourage all to read the brief but moving biographical notes about
Bl. Zdenka that can be found at an Internet site created by some of
her own Holy Cross Sisters here.

+
Thanks, David.
I got the shivers when I read your words, "It is a small world." I
don't know what made you say that, but get this ...
In our e-mail exchange, Bl. Zdenka's niece and I discovered that we
grew up in the same neighborhood and attended the same parish church
in the 1950s/60s.
JFG

Bl. Zdenka Schelingova's niece was also concerned about the fact that
I had listed her on this "June 30" thread, since she had been under
the impression that her aunt's day of memorial was her day of death,
July 31. Now she has just sent me part of an e-mail reply that she
received from a Swiss convent of Bl. Zdenka's religious sisters,
revealing that the day of memorial is actually July30.

My listing her on June 30 was due either to an error in the English
translation of the beatification decree (which I heard on EWTN) or to
an error in misreading my own handwriting (taking "Jul" for "Jun").
Bl. Zdenka's memorial could not be assigned to July 31, which is the
(obligatory) memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola.